Friends Don't Let Friends Use Pie Charts

First Timers Note

You’ll see all class related readings posted here on a weekly basis. With that said, take a look at the items below:

Get Some Advice

First things first:



Far be it from us to disagree with Snoop, so you should probably go read the syllabus as soon as possible!

Review the Rest

Review the overviews of the other areas as well: Assignments, Examples, Lessons, and Schedule pages for this class.

Read Things

Data visualization isn’t just about making pretty pictures1, rather it is done to convey a great deal of information in an efficient way. With that said, you have probably come across visualizations in the media, online, etc that simply don’t make sense or are confusing. Can you recall one that was just terrible? Think about that question as you go through this week’s readings:

  1. WAINER, H. (1984). How to Display Data Badly. The American Statistician, 38(2), 137-147.
  2. Tufte, E. R. (2001). Graphical Excellence. The visual display of quantitative information (2nd ed., pp. 13-51). Graphics Press.
  3. Tufte, E. R. (2001). Graphical Integrity. The visual display of quantitative information (2nd ed., pp. 52-77). Graphics Press.

You can download all of the readings via this link.


  1. although that is very important!↩︎